Findhorn towelled his head dry, moved across to the port for-ard window and peered through the Clear View Screen — a circular, inset plate or glass band-driven at high speed by an electric motor. Under normal conditions of wind and rain centrifugal force is enough to keep the screen clear and provide reasonable visibility. There was nothing normal about the conditions that night and the worn driving belt, f 01 which they had no spare, was slipping badly. Findhorn grunted in disgust and turned away.
“Well, Mr. Nicolson, what do you make of it?”
“The same as you, sir.” He wore no hat and the blond hair was plastered over head and forehead. “Can’t see a thing ahead.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“I know.” Nicolson smiled, braced himself against a sudden, vicious pitch, against the jarring shock that shook the windows of the wheelhouse. “This is the first time we’ve been safe in the past week.”
Findhorn nodded. “You’re probably right. Not even a maniac would come out looking for us on a night like this. Valuable hours of safety, Johnny,” he murmured quietly, “and we would be better employed putting even more valuable miles between ourselves and brother Jap.”
Nicolson looked at him, looked away again. It was impossible to tell what he was thinking, but Findhorn knew something at least of what he must be thinking, and swore quietly to himself. He was making it as easy as possible — Nicolson had only to agree with him.
“The chances of there being any survivors around are remote,” Findhorn went on. “Look at the night. Our chances of picking anybody up are even more remote. Again, look at the night — and as you say yourself we can’t see a damn’ tiling ahead. And the chances of piling ourselves up on a reef — or even a fair-sized island — are pretty high.” He looked out a side window at the driving fury of the rain and the low, scudding cloud. “We haven’t a hope of a star-sight While this lot lasts.”
“Our chances are pretty thin,” Nicolson agreed. He lit a cigarette, automatically returned the spent match to its box, watched the blue smoke eddying lazily in the soft light of the binnacle, then looked up at Findhorn. “How much do you give for the chances of any survivors on the Kerry Dancer, sir?”
Findhorn looked into the ice-cold blue of the eyes, looked away again, said nothing.
“If they took to the beats before the weather broke down, they’ll be on an island now,” Nicolson went on quietly. “There are dozens of them around. If they took to the boats later, they’re gone long ago — a dozen of these coasters couldn’t muster one regulation lifeboat between them. If there are any survivors we can save, they’ll still be on the Kerry Dancer. A needle in a haystack, I know, but a bigger needle than a raft or a baulk of wood.”
Captain Findhorn cleared his throat. “I appreciate all this, Mr. Nicolson——”
“She’ll be drifting more or less due south,” Nicolson interrupted. He looked up from the chart on the table. “Two knots, maybe three. Heading for the Merodong Straits-bound to pile up later tonight. We could come round to port a bit, still give Mesana Island a good offing and have a quick looksee.”
“You’re assuming an awful lot,” Findhorn said slowly.
“I know. I’m assuming that she wasn’t sunk hours ago.” Nicolson smiled briefly, or maybe it was only a grimace, it was very dark in the wheelhouse now. “Perhaps I’m feeling fey tonight, sir. Perhaps it’s my Scandinavian ancestry coming out . . . An hour and a half should get us there. Even in this head sea, not more than two.”
“All right, damn you!” Findhorn said irritably. “Two hours, and then we turn back.” He glanced at the luminous figures on his wrist-watch. “Six twenty-five now. The deadline is eight-thirty.” He spoke briefly to the helmsman, turned and followed Nicolson, who was holding the screen door open for him against the wild lurching of the Viroma. Outside the howling wind was a rushing, irresistible wall that pinned them helplessly, for seconds on end, against the after end of the bridge, fighting for their breath: the rain was no longer rain but a deluge, driving horizontally, sleet-cold, razor edged, that seemed to lay exposed foreheads and cheeks open to the bone: the wind in the rigging was no longer a whine but an ululating scream, climbing off the register, hurtful to the ear. The Viroma was moving in on the heart of the typhoon.
CHAPTER FOUR
Two HOURS, Captain Findhorn had given them, two hours at the outside limit, but it might as well have been two minutes or two days, for all the hope that remained. Everyone knew that, knew that it was just a gesture, maybe to their own consciences, maybe to the memory of a few wounded soldiers, a handful of nurses and a radio operator who had leaned over his transmitting key and died. But still only a hopeless gesture . . .
They found the Kerry Dancer at twenty-seven minutes past eight, three minutes before the deadline. They found her, primarily, because Nicolson’s predictions had been uncannily correct, the Kerry Dancer was almost exactly where he had guessed they would find her and a long, jagged fork of lightning had, for a brief, dazzling moment, illumined the gaunt, burnt-out scarecrow as brightly as the noonday sun. Even then they would never have found her had not the hurricane force of the wind dropped away to the merest whisper, and the blinding rain vanished as suddenly as if someone had turned off a gigantic tap in the heavens.
That there was no miracle about the almost instantaneous transition from the clamour of the storm to this incredible quiet Captain Findhorn was grimly aware. Always, at the heart of a typhoon, lies this oasis of peace. This breathless, brooding hush was no stranger to him — but on the two or three previous occasions he had had plenty of sea room, could turn where he wished when the going became too bad. But not this tune. To the north, to the west and to the south-west their escape route was blocked off by islands of the archipelago.
They couldn’t have entered the heart of the typhoon at a worse time.
And they couldn’t have done it at a better time. If anyone lived on the Kerry Dancer conditions for rescue would never be more favourable than this. If anyone lived — and from what they could see of her in the light of their canal searchlights and the port signalling lamp as they bore slowly down on her, it seemed unlikely. More, it seemed impossible. In the harsh glare of the searchlights she seemed more forlorn, more abandoned than ever, so deep now by the head that the f or’ard well deck had vanished, and the fo’c’sle, like some lonely rock, now awash, now buried deep as the big seas rolled it under — the wind had gone, the rain had gone, but the seas were almost as high as ever, and even more confused.
Captain Findhorn gazed out silently at the Kerry Dancer his eyes bleak. Caught in a cone of light, broached to and broadside on to the waves, she was rolling sluggishly in the troughs, her centre of gravity pulled right down by the weight of hundreds of tons of water. Dead, he thought to himself, dead if ever a ship was dead but she just won’t go. Dead, and that’s her ghost, he thought inconsequentially, and ghost-like she seemed, eerie and foreboding with the searchlights shining through the twisted rectangular gaps in her burnt-out upper-works. She reminded him vaguely, tantalisingly, of something, then all of a sudden he had it — the Death Ship of the Ancient Mariner, with the red, barred sun shining through the skeleton of her timbers. No deader than this one here, he thought grimly. Nothing could have been emptier of life than this. . . . He became aware that the chief officer was standing just behind his shoulder.
“Well, there she is, Johnny,” he murmured “Candidate-elect for the Sargasso Sea, or wherever dead ships go. It’s been a nice trip. Let’s be getting back.”
“Yes, sir.” Nicolson didn’t seem to have heard him. “Permission to take a boat across, sir.”
“No.” Findhorn’s refusal was flat, emphatic. “We’ve seen all we want to see.”
“We’ve come back a long way for this.” There was no particular inflection in Nicolson’s voice. “Vannier, the bo’sun, Ferris, myself and a couple of others. We could make it.”
“Maybe you could.” Bracing himself against the heavy rolling of the Viroma, Findhorn made his way to the outer edge of the port wing and stared down at the sea. Even jn the lee of the ship, there were still ten or fifteen feet between troughs and wavecrests, the short, steep seas confused and treacherous. “And maybe you couldn’t. I don’t propose to risk anyone’s life just to find that out.”